News anchor selling Oak Park home

January 15, 2012|By Bob Goldsborough, Special to the Tribune

The 5,288-square-foot Erwin House in Oak Park's estate district has 4½ baths, a grand foyer with a fireplace, a three-tier staircase with art glass windows, a wraparound porch and a kitchen with a granite island and pizza oven.

Former WMAQ-Ch. 5 news anchor Zoraida Sambolin, who recently left the station to join CNN in New York, has listed her six-bedroom, architecturally significant house in Oak Park for $1.8 million.

Sambolin, 44, announced in November that she would be leaving NBC-5, where she had worked since 2002, to co-host a new 5 to 7 a.m. broadcast on CNN with Ashleigh Banfield.

Sambolin and her former husband paid $1 million in 2004 for the 5,288-square-foot house, which was designed by architect George W. Maher (1864-1926) and sits in Oak Park's estate district. Known as the Erwin House, it has 41/2 baths, a grand foyer with a fireplace, a three-tier staircase with art glass windows, a wraparound porch and a kitchen with a granite island and pizza oven.

"It's just a fabulous house," said listing agent Patricia McDonald of Baird & Warner, who also had been the listing agent when Sambolin bought the house. "It's spacious, and it's in an excellent location. And its kitchen is huge. It's very warm and inviting. They took three smaller rooms when the house was renovated to make the kitchen."

Gold Coast mansion

A vintage 12-room Gold Coast mansion that billionaire venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker had rented for the last four years sold at the end of November for $5.3 million to a onetime Chicago investment banker.

Through his Baci McGaci LLC, John Simpson, who once ran the Chicago office of defunct investment bank Wasserstein Perella and now is the chief operating officer of Canyon Capital Realty Advisors in Los Angeles, bought the mansion. The sellers were a group managed by Chicago real estate executive Phil Farley.

The group had rented out the mansion, which had been listed for $5.75 million, to Pritzker while work was being done on Pritzker's home nearby.

Built in 1891, the six-bedroom mansion has five full baths and two half baths. Quite unusual for the Gold Coast, the mansion has a five-car garage.

Lincoln Park deal

Developer Fred Latsko has sold a 12-room, new-construction mansion in Lincoln Park for $2 million.

Built in 2009, the five-bedroom, French-inspired mansion sits on a very narrow, 19-foot lot and has an eat-in kitchen with Viking appliances, wide-planked hardwood floors, custom doors, smart-house wiring and a private deck. The 3,800-square-foot home, which was the subject of a foreclosure action, had been listed since 2009 for $2.3 million.

"I thought it was a fair price for a nonconforming lot width on a street where most lots are 25 feet," Latsko said.